10 players, all from the Eastern European region, have been indefinitely banned by Valve and PGL tournaments due to account sharing and impersonation.
Notable names include Kamil “Koma`” Biktimirov, Virtus Pro’s new carry player announced just two weeks ago, and Yaroslav “Limitless” Parshin, who last played for Alliance and HellRaisers.
Seven of these players were contracted to teams, while three were free agents.
Virtus Pro, regarding its new carry player Koma`, said that they were “aware of the situation,” and is “conducting an internal investigation to understand more about the circumstances that led to this ban.”
While PGL’s initial announcement provided little on these players’ actions, it’s highly likely that they were found guilty of using each other’s accounts to play professional games — a serious breach of competitive integrity, and there’s precedent of harsh punishment from Valve.
The last major ban wave from Valve was in March this year, where players from Team Orca and Team Apex were implicated in another account-sharing scandal. Team Orca’s players used Apex’s accounts to play open qualifiers in the Dota Pro Circuit.
It’s not impossible for these players to make their way back. Three North American players, Chad “Szabo666” Szabo, Ilyas “Steelborco” Kaukenov, and Shanchao “P1” Jin were initially implicated in a matchfixing scandal in May 2021, before their bans were rescinded according to a lead admin from the NA DPC.
